


A Few Months Too Late But Not A Moment Too Soon

by Kymopoleia



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, but more in the second chapter than the first, in second chapter, super graphic paragraph
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4075888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymopoleia/pseuds/Kymopoleia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy Jackson hadn’t exactly expected to ever see the Roman augur again after he’d gone up in flames, but he also hadn’t expected him and Annabeth to break up or for him to stay in New Rome as a <em>civilian</em>.  So, in a very short time, a lot had changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Percy Jackson hadn’t exactly expected to ever see the Roman augur again after he’d gone up in flames, but he also hadn’t expected him and Annabeth to break up or for him to stay in New Rome as a _civilian_. So, in a very short time, a lot had changed.

First off? Him deciding to stay in New Rome. As a civilian. Sort of.

He still had an obligation to their military, but he was put more on reserve than front lines, and wasn’t even actually required to show up to roll call or anything. He just had to contact Reyna or Frank once a week and let them know he wasn’t MIA. It was a pretty sweet gig, in general. He was going to college, taking remedial classes for pretty much everything- being kidnapped by crazy goddesses _so_ did not work for keeping up in school- and he was doing well in it.

After he’d gotten settled into New Rome, he and Annabeth had finally gotten around to having The Talk. The one where they went over everything they’d ignored over the years they’d been together, everything they liked and didn’t like about themselves. Then it shifted from what they liked and didn’t like to how things had changed since Tartarus and how they had changed since Tartarus and, most importantly, how their situations had changed since Tartarus.

Then, just like that, they’d broken up.

Two years of relationship switched to friendship and, strangely, Percy found himself not caring.

Yes, they’d loved each other, but now things had changed. He couldn’t be near her without thinking of the place worse than Hell, and the pain of thinking about Tartarus wasn’t something either of them deserved. They had their PTSD, but it seemed this was one thing they couldn’t get past.

Finally, back to the bit about the Roman augur.

Gods, he had been annoying alive, and he was even more so now.

It turned out that, for whatever reason, Octavian wasn’t actually dead. His physical body had been burned and spread through the atmosphere as ashes (technically, couldn’t Percy blame global warming on the other boy?) but his time hadn’t actually been up. So he was sent back up, without a physical body or instructions on what to do.

And, of course, since Hades and every other God and Goddess hated Percy, he’d been sent to Percy’s room. At two in the morning.

He may have a lot of catching up to do on mortal tv, but he remembered one line clearly. _Nothing good happened after two am._ They probably knew exactly how many truths they were telling, but it specifically applied to Percy Jackson one night not too long after he’d aced a midterm. Actually, he’d aced all of his midterms. It was the best feeling in his life.

Octavian hadn’t really been physical, but he looked physical. He probably couldn’t affect stuff like cars, but he could move papers and light stuff and pet cats and probably even touch Percy, though he hadn’t tried.

Speaking of cats, Percy was going to _kill_ Jason. The son of a Zeus had given him Octavian’s old cat. _What the hell_? Couldn’t he do the decent thing and keep the cat for himself or, who knows, let Percy know before he gave him a dead asshole’s cat? Manners, Percy swore he was the only one who had them.

“Stop thinking so hard, it’s a horrible look on you.” Octavian says from where he’s sitting on Percy’s bed, petting Denny, the who-even-knows-what-breed cat curled next to him at the foot of the bed. The cat adores him, Percy could tell from the moment he woke up to see what looked like his latest mortal enemy staring at him from probably the same spot he was at now.

“I have to figure out _something_.” Percy replies, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t just… Keep you here. People come by here, people come into my room, I- gods I might even be _dating_ this one girl. I can’t play babysitter for my dead frenemy.”

“You don’t have to-“ Octavian lifts his hands to make air quotes. “To “play babysitter” for me. I am older than you, you know.” Denny whines at him and he returns to petting her. “I can handle myself.”

“You couldn’t handle yourself when you were alive.” Percy rolled his eyes. “You were- what? Grandson? Great grandson? Of the god of the sun and light and medicine and music, and you looked like a walking skeleton.”

Octavian rolled his eyes. “Have you never seen someone with severe anemia, greacus?”

“What about how your shoulder juts out?” Percy points at it, worried to try to touch the other.

“Scoliosis.” Octavian shrugs. “It is relatively common for children to develop it by growing too quickly.”

“You? Grow too quickly? You’re about as thin around as my pinky. On a bad day. When I was twelve.” Percy rolls his eyes.

“At one time, when Jason was nine or so, I was shorter than him. Within two years I’d shot up a foot and a half, and then steadily grew from there.”

Percy stares at him in mild horror. “You’re joking. You, shorter than Jason? I’m like an inch taller than him. And you’re like three inches taller than me.”

“Yes. I had to look up at him when I was eleven. Or maybe the growth spurt hit when I was thirteen? I’m unsure, all I know was that he was atleast ten by the time I was taller than him.” He scratches behind Denny’s ear, and she purrs louder than she ever did for Percy.

“Were you ever on good terms with him?” Percy asks.

“Hm?”

“Jason. Were you and him, I dunno, friends?”

“I don't know about him,” Octavian shrugs. “I think he liked me enough for me to be one, but I don’t know if I ever actually put effort into it. Certainly not the effort he deserved.”

Percy raises an eyebrow and grabs the spinning chair from under his desk, sitting down and staring at Octavian. “You sound like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. I thought you died screaming about ‘traitor Jason Grace’?”

Octavian keeps his eyes pointedly on Denny. “There’s been much time for me to think. Besides, who he was before meeting the Greeks was not who he was after. Sure, he was always annoying and loud and ready to protect what he believed in, but he was more… Roman.”

Percy stares at him. “Dude, that makes no sense. You’re all Roman.”

“Yes,” Octavian sighs. “But he was more Roman than the rest of us. He had an unattainable status. Not only was he a son of Jupiter, but he had been with the Roman Legion since he was a toddler. He’d been a Centurion since turning twelve, and was appointed Praetor at fourteen. He was a year past his required service when he became Praetor. He led us into battle during the Titan War, but then, not too long after, he disappeared. If he had never resurfaced, if you had never come to the Legion, he would have gone down in history.”

Percy shakes his head. “Okay, if you think his story suddenly ends when he met the Greeks, you’re wrong. He and I, and the rest of the seven, we joined two cultures together that had been battling for dominance for centuries. He helped lead what was arguably the most important quest since ever to stop Gaea, and sacrificed so much. He wasn’t just a Roman Praetor, dude, he was a Greek hero too.”

Octavian hummed, moving to rub at Denny’s stomach. “It does not change the fact that he betrayed the Roman Legion by aiding and abetting an attack against it.”

“That’s what’s got your panties in a twist?” Percy whined.

Octavian shoots him a questioning glare.

“That was Leo, first of all, and he was possessed by evil spirits. I think they were evil Roman spirits, for that matter. Jason just did what he had to do to try and get out alive. Besides, he had a girlfriend who was going on the ship no matter what, and we all had to save Nico, whether we knew it at the time or not.”

Octavian’s glare softens to something Percy doesn’t recognize. Granted, this is longer than the last real conversation they’d had, where Octavian murdered his panda pillow pet for some dumb reason, but it’s still disconcerting that he doesn’t know what the other is thinking. He seriously hopes it isn’t murder or something.

“Whatever the truth may be, the facts remain. People died in that attack on the city. Men, women, children, elderly. All demigods or legacies that had a long future ahead of them or a long story to tell. I was seeking to avenge them, before my death, though I may not have pursued my vengeance through the correct channels.”

Percy bit his lip. He had never actually thought about that. He’d never realized that people could have _died_ then. What if he, Annabeth, Hazel, Reyna, or Nico had been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Piper, Jason, Frank, Leo? What would he have done then?

Or- oh gods, now that he’s thinking on that train, he can’t stop. What if he’d been born a Roman, and his _mother_ had been in that area? He covers his mouth, staring at the ground in shock as the what-ifs pour over him.

“You’re starting to understand.” Octavian says softly.

After that, Octavian had stood and gone to the living room and found that he could lay down on couches, so he does, and Percy lays in bed trying to sleep and trying not to actively think about everything he and Octavian had talked about.

It doesn’t work well, so he tries to, instead, focus on how different Octavian looks now.

He didn’t actually see him pre-fiery suicide, but he’d heard stories. He’d heard that Octavian looked incredibly sicker than usual, especially with all the white fabric heaped on him. He apparently had all kinds of jewelry and robes that he hadn’t earned, and was acting like the bratty king of the world. And all that was just tales from Nico and Will Solace and Mike Kahale, who Percy met after everything was over and had decided was a cool guy. At the time, the stories had been cool and laughable and felt real. He had been able to easily imagine the sickly legacy of Apollo, stumbling around under too much fabric and bling and responsibility.

However, the stories felt pretty hard to believe now that Percy was seeing Octavian in his post-fiery suicide and possible afterlife getup. He was in a simple SPQR purple shirt, a white toga with an Apollo broach, a gold cord around his waist, and a pair of sweatpants occasionally peeking out from the folds of the toga. He still looked sick, but he looked less malicious and more “keep me home from school just one more day and feed me tomato soup and I’ll survive” sick. It was awful.

Percy didn’t exactly regret all the shit he’d talked. He decided that it had been in bad taste, but he didn’t regret it. Octavian had still terrorized Camp Half-Blood and led an attack on it that killed atleast a hundred Roman and Greek demigods, and attempted to get a full army of monsters under his rule. Percy didn’t want to forgive him for that, and he definitely didn’t want to overlook it due to one late night conversation post-mortem, when Percy wasn’t even sure he was awake or not. This could be an aftereffect of studying for a change, or an obscure side effect of his PTSD. Hallucinations were common, right?

But a few hours of fitful sleep came and went, and when he went out front to get breakfast, Octavian was still there, his toga wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket and hair messed up. Percy is struck by how odd it is to see what was basically a ghost napping.

He makes a big omelette for himself because he’s pretty sure that physical bodies are required to eat. It takes roughly half an hour for Octavian to stir, ten minutes for him to wake up, and another twenty for him to be blearily staggering around, as if he wants coffee but isn’t familiar enough with the apartment to figure out where it is. Or would be, if Percy were allowed within fifteen feet of coffee. As it was, he wasn’t allowed to have it in his apartment and he wasn’t allowed to enter coffee shops without supervision.

Finally, Octavian pours himself a glass of orange juice and stares blankly at the tile floor.

Percy, who’d been in the middle of washing dishes, breaks the plate he’d been holding when he realized that Octavian was actually drinking the orange juice. And that nothing weird was happening. And that he could hold the cup.

Percy, finally deciding to figure some things out, reaches out and touches the glass first. It’s still real.

Octavian’s eyes turn to his hand.

Percy slowly moves his hand up, until his fingers brush against Octavian’s.

They move over them, rather than go through like he’d expected, and he realizes something.

“You do have a physical body. Octavian, wake up bro, you have an actual body!”

It takes a long few seconds for the words to sink in before Octavian sets the glass down and touches his arm.

They’d had a period of time the night before where they proved that Octavian wasn’t actually corporeal, testing what he could and couldn’t touch and pick up and testing throwing random objects through him. That had been fun for a few minutes, but had ended in Percy standing and panicking about Octavian being there and Octavian going back to petting his damn cat.

At first it doesn’t make sense for his body to have been so iffy the night before but solid now, but then Percy remembers what had happened to Nico after his overdose on shadow traveling. Octavian, still groggy, was still testing the solidness of his body and his strength while Percy came to that conclusion.

“Your body was still forming when you came over!” Percy grins, happy he’d figured it out. “That’s why you could touch some things, but not others, and why stuff went through you!”

Octavian looks up at him.

“You came from the Underworld, right?”

Octavian nods.

“Well, technically, so did Nico. And shadows are a big thing down there. Anyways, you were still mostly shadows when you came through, and that’s why everything was how it was, and why you were able to sleep it off!”

Octavian is still staring at him groggily, and it’s pretty much clear that he won’t be truly awake until he gets real caffeine.

Percy goes to his room and pulls on a pair of jeans and a jacket, and comes back out. “Stay here, don’t go anywhere. I’m buying you coffee. What’s your favorite type?”

Octavian lists something off that Percy has probably heard of before, and he nods, grabbing his wallet and keys and leaving the apartment excitedly.

Then he realizes that he forgot his phone, decides it doesn’t matter, and hurries to go get his now-physical dead enemy coffee before he wakes up the normal way and freaks.

Octavian was left, sleepy and alone, in a strange apartment the morning after he’d left Pluto and Thanos’ waiting rooms. So he does the natural thing, and heads for the actual bed to sleep more.

Percy spent half an hour out of the apartment, and he spent the whole time worrying about what Octavian would do unsupervised. On one hand, the only papers Percy had in his apartment were things like textbooks, notes from his classes, a copy of his birth certificate, and a few journals he’d forgotten he’d written back when he was new and only knew about the Greek Gods. Hell, the first one still had a good opinion of Luke, which was a sure sign that it was old as _Olympus_ itself. He wasn’t sure about his birth certificate or school things, but he guessed it might actually do the other some good to read the journals and see things from someone else’s perspective. Besides, the Titan War had been crazy, he had been young, and he had made too many mistakes. Maybe they could connect over their respective mistakes.

Nevertheless, by the time he had two bags of ground coffee (avoiding anyone he actually knew with the goods was hard in such a small neighborhood where so many of his friends were known to frequent) and a bag of powdered donuts, he’s jumpy and nervous. He did have a coffeemaker, a gift from Reyna before she’d heard of the many reasons he wasn’t actually allowed to have the drink. She had asked him, very nicely, to never install the gift but didn’t take it back.

The whole “don’t give Percy coffee” thing sucked. He’d never actually had coffee at either of the camps before. It had started as a joke by Grover, and had ended as a word-of-mouth cautionary tale that was currently still in circulation. Anytime someone hadn’t heard the story of “Percy Jackson and the Caffeine High” was bombarded with it and a warning not to repeat history.

He’s almost safely home, just a flight of stairs away, when Jason stops him.

“Uh, hey Jason.” Percy smiles at the other, doing his part in the typical complicated handshake that ended in a hug where his bag of illicit coffee ended up awkwardly hitting Jason’s ass.

“What’s up man?” Jason asks, stepping back and, thank the gods, being polite and oblivious to the contents of the bag that had hit his ass. “I heard you yell last night, and I would have come upstairs, but I didn’t hear anything after it. You okay?” His blue eyes are sparkling with worry.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” Percy grinned. “Just glad midterms are over. They stressed me out more than any quest.”

Jason nods at his words as if he’s just spoken the gospel. “I understand. Class in general is draining, but it’s better than a traditional high school. I’ve heard horror stories about the bathrooms.”

Percy laughs. “Are we talking using or getting out to them? Because both were pretty much impossible at any school I’ve ever been at.”

Jason laughs with him, and shrugs. “I’ve never experienced that. There are individual restrooms, and in each house is a normal bathroom, but there is also the bath houses. And those are all available to me at any time, so there has never been any problems in getting to them.”

Percy nods. “I’m getting that now that I live here full time. Now, I was just stepping out for a minute on a doughnut run,” He holds up the bag. “And I need to be getting inside. I haven’t fed Denny yet this morning, and I need to get ready for the second semester.”

Jason gestured at the stairs behind him. “I get it, go feed your cat, Jackson. Text me sometime, okay? We live one floor apart but we never see each other.” He looks like a sad puppy.

“Totally, man. There’s just been a lot going on, what with class and Annabeth and getting over Tar… The war.”

Jason puts his hands in his pockets. “I get it. I was on the Argo II with you and Annabeth and everyone else, dude. You can talk to me about anything. And, you know, I might even be able to help.”

Percy feels a pang of guilt as he walks away, because he knows that Jason probably could help him.


	2. Chapter 2

Percy steps inside his apartment, expecting it to be torn apart, or expecting his laptop to be moved from its spot charging on the kitchen table, or maybe even to actually see Octavian. What he doesn’t expect is for his apartment to be completely devoid of formerly dead augurs and cats.

His honest-to-gods first thought is ‘ _Fuck me, that asshole stole my cat_ ’, which is incredibly rude considering that the moment he shuts the apartment door, there’s a mumbled sound from his bedroom that sounds like Octavian and that, a few seconds later, Denny pads out of the cracked door, meowing loudly when she sees him.

Percy sets the bag on the table and goes to the door to glance inside and make sure there’s actually a person in there, and that everything else wasn’t a hallucination and that he didn’t just spend like twenty bucks for no reason.

But, of course, either the fates smiled upon him or they decided they hated him like the rest of the gods, because Octavian is, in fact, curled up in Percy’s bed when he glances inside, one hundred percent not creepily. It’s his apartment, for Hades’ sake. He could check to make sure people were or were not in his apartment without being creepy.

Satisfied (to an extent) about the contents of his apartment, Percy goes to the spare bedroom/storage room closet to dig out the coffeemaker Reyna had given him, still fresh and in its box. It didn’t even have dust on it yet. Hell, it was probably still expensive in stores.

Percy took it out to the kitchen and spent a few minutes rearranging the pile of mail and the toaster and the microwave to make room for the coffeemaker. It occurs to him that he will have to one day explain this to his friend group, but he prays that day comes when Octavian isn’t living with him (because, really, what other option did the legacy have? Mike Kahale had mentioned how his grandmother had died in the attack on New Rome, how his siblings and cousins and extended family wanted nothing to do with him. Apparently they hadn’t even mourned the story of his “honorable” death that the Romans told themselves to make themselves feel like they followed someone who wasn’t as physically menacing as a kitten). Then Percy started on following the instruction book (which was written in annoyingly small print and in a font that made his dyslexia go crazy) to make a pot of coffee.

The first batch doesn’t explode, though he does realize he forgot to buy coffee filters. Then he decides to forgo the whole mess and buy them later, and grabs a glass of sweet tea to bring to Octavian.

Octavian wasn’t actually sleeping. He was trying to, really hard, but the first time he’d slept had ended up in a nightmare involving fire, his flesh burning, his Pontifex robes melting and bonding with his skin, and his imperial gold jewelry dripping over his skin and pooling in the pits in his burning muscles. It was horrifying. What was worse, however, was waking up and having time to actually realize that it hadn’t been a nightmare, but a memory.

That, mixed with the normal grogginess and confusion he felt in the mornings, added to by the absolute exhaustion he felt from ascending out of death’s grasp, was why his only reaction to Percy Jackson’s revelation that morning on his current state was blank staring and confused touching of his arm. Well, the confused touching of his arm would likely have happened either way, due to how vivid the memories were. He’d honestly forgotten what it felt like to _feel_ , and it seemed like the first thing he would be feeling was pain.

Just his luck, right?

Many things about his current predicament felt like they were of the same type of “Just my luck”. The night before, he’d only been able to move papers and touch his cat, two things which had summed up pretty much his whole existence up until the point where he died. Well, and imperial gold daggers and stuffed animals, but it hadn’t seemed like Jackson had any of either lying around.

However, thinking about it, the first time they had met, Percy had been carrying a pillow pet. A panda pillow pet. He’d pitched a fit when Octavian had used it to attempt to see if he carried any ill will, and the encounter had set the tone of their relationship. Octavian did what was necessary and Percy Jackson pitched a fit about it.

Looking back, Octavian could see more than a few times when he had been in the wrong. He was not above admitting that he did not hang the sun and stars, or that he did not have a full orchestra playing every time he opened his mouth to speak. He was not a perfect being, in fact, he was incredibly flawed. And he knew that.

Percy Jackson, on the other hand, acted like and was treated like he was a literal gift from the gods. He expected rules to be bent for him, and while that trait was attractive on many others, it simply did not work for the brat of Neptune.

Percy Jackson was arrogant, childish, and above all, self-absorbed. However, he was mindful of his friends (to an extent) and wholeheartedly believed in them, whether they had done wrong or not. Octavian valued people like that, even if he did not ever actively decide to be around them.

Being fair, he didn’t have time for people like Percy Jackson normally. They were tedious. When friends with people like Percy Jackson, you both had to deal with everything constantly being about them and them acting as if you could do no wrong. Octavian had come to believe, in his tragically short life, that the mere concept of someone being incapable of wrongdoings was inconceivable, let alone the concept that someone like that actually existing in this world was laughable. It was impossible, improbable, and unworthy of the time spent on contemplating it.

Octavian felt the dip in the bed before he registered that Jackson was in the room, and he groggily blinked at him. His mind was working, but his limbs felt as if they were filled with lead- or as if all his nerves were fried. They had an equal feeling, except he knew it wasn’t the latter because he could still feel the constant ache.

Percy is holding a glass of something, and has the same look on his face that he gets when he’s thinking too hard about all the wrong things.

“Stop thinking, you’ll hurt yourself.” He mumbles at Percy.

Percy blinks, apparently having not realized that Octavian was capable of speaking.

“Morning.” He says, offering Octavian the glass. “It’s not coffee, but it is sweet”

Octavian sits up a little and takes the glass. “Is it poisoned?”

Percy stared at him. “No? Why would I do that?”

“Because you hate me, and then I’d actually be dead. Then I’d be out of your life, likely permanently.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Percy frowns. “I wouldn’t… Why would you think I would do that?”

“Because of who you are. You’re a son of Neptune.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Percy looks hurt and confused. Not that Octavian cares.

“Everything, nothing. You decide, I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Technically, Poseidon is my father.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Octavian sips from the cup, and finds that it’s sweet tea. Northerner sweet tea. While it isn’t bad, it does taste fake.

Percy looks away, sighing. “Did you do anything?”

Octavian looks at him. “I slept.”

“Did you like… Go through anything?”

“No. I was too tired.”

“Oh.”

Octavian could almost swear that Percy sounded _disappointed_.

“Do you want me to go through your things?” He asks after sipping more of the tea. He already feels more awake, if annoyed and somewhat scared.

“No!” Percy says too quickly. “Well. Yes and no. All I have here is clothing and textbooks and mail and random stuff. Nothing interesting.”

“And you were worried that I’d find you interesting before hearing this?” Octavian asks, sounding sarcastic but intending for it to be a tease.

Percy looks at him. “Funny. I just don’t know what we’re going to do. What _you’re_ going to do.”

Octavian sipped at the tea and didn’t answer, so Percy continued.

“Your family isn’t really an option, and you’re supposed to be dead, so we can’t get you out of the city without Termy freaking out.”

“So I am stuck in the city?” Octavian asks.

“Yeah.”

“So, no change from when I was growing up?” He raises an eyebrow.

Percy rolls his eyes. “No, guess not.”

Octavian sits up slowly. “I can handle that. Am I allowed out of the apartment?”

Percy looks him over. “Not like that. Not… Looking like you.”

“Like me?” Percy watches Octavian looks down at himself, all pale skin and purple SPQR shirt and dark gray sweatpants. His toga is still out in the living room, and while it’s decidedly weird not to see him wearing it, Percy decides that he likes him better without it. At the moment he just looks like a sick college student, bags under his eyes and skin that looks like it’s never seen sun before. 

“Yeah. Recognizable. Everyone knew who Octavian the Augur was.” Percy shrugs, and Octavian looks at him. “Come on, tell me you noticed it, man?”

“Noticed my fame, or noticed my infamy?” He grabs the cup of sweet tea and sips from it again. Percy notices how he takes tiny sips, as if it’s too hot or too cold and he’s afraid of hurting himself.

“Both.”

“Of course I noticed both of them. I am a politician, Percy Jackson.” He rolls his eyes. “Public opinion is not only something I must be well aware of, but something that I must attempt to be in control of. If I were less successful with my public relations, I never would have been able to make it as far as I did. And, if you recall, I led an army who did not like me alongside an army that wanted to devour me, against the wishes of my superior who was far better liked than I.” He smiles, and Percy doesn’t know what kind of emotion could be going into that smile.

“You did.” Percy shifts so he can look at Octavian better. “And then you died. Basically committed suicide.”

Octavian flinches at the last word. “I- I would never. I did not.”

“You had to have realized you were stuck on the catapult-“

“Onager.” Octavian interrupts, even though he looks visibly shaken.

“Whatever. You had to have realized you were stuck to it, dude. You can’t be that oblivious.”

Octavian sets the glass of tea down and hurries to get out of the bed. “I don’t have to say anything to you. I don’t have to explain- I don’t have to- don’t even speak to me.” He steps out of the room, and Percy hears the balcony doors open.

He doesn’t worry about Octavian leaving or jumping or being seen, because it’s noon on a Tuesday, and he’s noticed that no one who has noon on Tuesdays free actually spends it at home. Except for him.

He decides to put the coffee and powdered donuts up and go for a walk. It would let him spend some time close to the bank of the little Tiber and it would let Octavian calm down.

Percy isn’t sure how over-the-line what he said was, but he would rather not find out. He didn’t want to do something stupid like scare his dead enemy into the streets. Not only would it not be cool to put him out, but he’d be endangering his life. Mike Kahale and his family seemed to want nothing to do with him, and with Jason just one floor down, there was a chance he wouldn’t make it out of the building before he was discovered.

So Percy was stuck with him.

He finishes wiping up the mess of now-cold murky water and coffee grinds, and makes sure he still has his keys and wallet before he leaves the apartment.

Octavian was shaking. He was crying. He was biting into the heel of his hand (and it _hurt_ ) to try and keep from making any noise. Most of his usually elaborate thoughts are reduced to an endless babble of “I wouldn’t” and “I didn’t mean to” inside his head.

Octavian sat down heavily on the floor of the balcony, pulling his knees up to his chest and leaning against the solid wall behind him rather than the rickety-looking railing fencing him in. Everything feels like too much- being alive, being around Percy, drinking northerner sweet tea, the walls in Percy’s apartment, the casual way the textbooks and notes were spread over the coffee table, Octavian’s broach, and even the tears cascading down his face. It’s all too much and he feels like he needs to talk, or text, something that would let him receive comfort and reprieve from the tsunami of emotions that was Percy Jackson.

He reaches for the pocket of his sweatpants, patting it nervously to check and see if it was still there. He pulls it out, and there it is, in all its glory. Percy Jackson’s cellphone.

He’s lucky the greacus didn’t have a password or a pattern or anything to lock it, and it’s a few shaky minutes before he manages to find Mike’s contact.

There’s a picture for the contact, and it’s been so long since Octavian saw his friend that he bursts into harder sobs. Without his hand between his teeth to muffle the noise, it’s painfully loud, and he has to spend a few more minutes gathering himself and blinking away the tears, trying to find a coherent thought between the ones of “I didn’t know” and “I was so distracted”

He finally manages to pick the phone up again, but his hand shakes so badly that he drops the phone, causing a new round of tears to start up.

Gods, he wishes he weren’t so weak and he wishes he weren’t so tired. He can’t sleep, he can’t hold a conversation, he can’t do anything without being reminded of his actions.

If Octavian could go back in time and warn himself of wherever he went wrong, he probably wouldn’t, because he knows that his past self would simply spend the whole time asking questions and not listening and trying to manipulate himself into helping him.

However, he is aware of how much he truly failed the Legion and New Rome as a hole. In the waiting room, he’d seen so many of his former allies and even his former enemies, all bloodied and upset and talking horribly of their former leader. He’d heard the gossip of his fiery demise, and gods, had he remembered it, but what truly hit home was listening to their regrets.

So many soldiers, a good portion of which being soldiers that he’d personally sponsored, all dead and waiting to be judged and put in one of the areas of the underworld.

And all his fault.

Octavian raises his hand to wipe some of the tears from his cheeks, trying to breathe through his mouth rather than around the nasty chunk of snot threatening to fall from his nose. Another thought crosses his mind- that he would hate to have anyone see him like this- before a paper towel is being waved in front of his face.

Octavian takes it and blows his nose into it, then wipes his cheeks before he realizes that there’s a person in front of him, and that apparently the gods hated him.

And, well, he deserved that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 6/5 edit: _screeching_  
>  i did not realize that i fucked up that last part  
> it was not all meant to be italicized  
>  _fuck_


	3. Chapter 3

Octavian looks up slowly, taking in the tennis shoes, the dirty hems of relatively cleaner jeans, the bare forearm with a tattoo of a lightning bolt and twelve dark marks, the orange Camp Half-Blood shirt that feels so wrong and out of place in New Rome, and then, finally the scar on Jason Grace’s lip, as well as the gold-rimmed glasses and confused blue eyes behind them.

Despite the last words he’d said in the mortal world a few long months ago (it felt like a lifetime- was that even the right word for it?), all he can find himself thinking now is _huh_.

Jason looks more mature now than when he was the Praetor, and while it could be chalked up to the difference in age, there’s something else there too. His eyes, though showing confusion now, seem softer than they used to, as if something had dimmed the crackling light of Jupiter’s lightning within him. Whatever he had seen through the war against Gaea had obviously changed him, aged him, made him seem less like a happy army brat and more like the weathered soldier the Legion would have made him become had he joined the Legion a few years later.

Octavian honestly didn’t know how to feel about this.

“Octavian?” Jason asks, finally, after a long silence. Percy’s phone locks, drawing Octavian’s attention for a short second and Jason’s for a longer one, but it doesn’t spark a conversation.

Octavian sets the used paper towel next to the phone, and looks down at one of the rails on the balcony.

“Are you really here?” Jason asks, still staring at him.

“Yes.” Octavian replies.

“How? And why are you on Perce’s balcony?”

“Because my cat is in that apartment.” The words come easier than expected, though he ignores the first question of Jason’s. Because, really, he can do _so_ much better than that when questioning Octavian.

“Oh. Yeah. She is.” Is all Jason says.

Octavian wonders when Jason ceased being articulate around him.

“Yes. She is.” Octavian repeats. “And I refuse to leave her with the likes of Jackson.” He wipes at his face again.

“Why were you crying?”

“What does it matter to you? It is not as if you mourned me.” The words are out before Octavian can stop them, and then he regrets them, because he is speaking to _Jason Grace_ , one of his oldest friends.

There’s a moment of silence before the storm breaks loose.

“Didn’t mourn you?” Jason asks, too loudly. “You honestly think I didn’t mourn you?”

Octavian refuses to look at him.

“Of _course_ I mourned you.” Jason drops to his knees in front of Octavian, grabbing his shoulders and forcing him to look at him. “It took way too long for me to remember you, but how could I not mourn you?”

Octavian looks at him. “Because you trusted them over me. Because you sided with _Jackson_.”

“Percy. His name is Percy. And yes, I did, because Juno messed with my head and I didn’t remember you and I barely remembered Reyna. All I remembered was this fake history with Piper and Leo and then I had all that stuff with everyone-“

“You remembered Hazel and Frank.” Octavian protests. “You remembered them and you remembered Reyna and you cannot blame all your problems on the gods and goddesses!”

“I’m not doing that!” Jason sits back on his butt, though he floats for a few seconds to remove the loud thump. Octavian remembers when he just figured out his flight powers, remembers how he learned to soar over the camp and how he learned to fly as fast as Scipio and how he and Reyna used to fight on opposite sides during the war games just for kicks. Octavian remembers when Jason would tease him while floating upside down in front of him like _Peter Pan_ , and Octavian remembers all the times that he and Reyna and Jason spent together before the…

Gods, now he can’t even remember what started the animosity. Was it Reyna becoming Praetor? Was it when Jason got wounded during the battle on the mountain? Was it when Hazel Levesque and Nico Di Angelo showed up?

When did things get this bad?

Percy’s phone buzzes on the ground, and Octavian looks down at it. It’s a call from someone named Clarisse, and Jason sighs and looks at Octavian and that look is one of the most _parental_ things Jason Grace has ever done in his direction.

“Octavian.” He starts, taking out the dad voice he usually reserved for the Legion-

Except, no, he didn’t have to use it on the Legion anymore. Because he wasn’t Praetor anymore. Jackson was. Or maybe someone else had been elected? Octavian hoped so. Jackson wasn’t living in the Praetor’s chambers, he was living in an apartment on the New Rome side of the city and camp. But if not Jackson, then who could it be?

“Why do you have Percy’s phone, and why are you in his apartment?”

Octavian finally looks up at him. Jason’s blue eyes are still as intense as ever, and Octavian almost wishes that he didn’t have the glasses (even though they worked for him) in the way.

He waffles between telling him the truth and lying. On one hand, he could finally have a confidant who isn’t Percy F. Jackson (the F stands for fucking, because that is the only middle name Octavian has ever heard in conjunction with Percy’s name, and if his mother had half a clue about who her son would become, she would have named him that herself), but on the other, he’d trusted Jason so many times and so hard before that the betrayal and turn to the Greeks just… Ruined it. How could Octavian honestly tell him anything now? But the second hand weighs heavier than the first, and while Octavian’s heart is still broken by the actions and decisions made by Jason Grace, he will always be the lesser of two evils.

Octavian sighs and looks at the phone as it goes to voicemail. “May we speak inside? You never know-“

“Who could be listening.” Jason finishes, nodding. “I listened to you.”

“Sometimes.” Octavian rolls his eyes as he stands, stretching then bends back down to grab the trash and Percy’s phone. Jason holds the door open for him, and they’re both very lucky that Percy is not in the apartment. It’s unclear of where he is, but he isn’t there and Octavian doesn’t have to deal with him while his eyes are still red and fingers still shaking.

Octavian goes to throw away the trash, and almost opens Percy’s fridge before he notices the ground coffee and checks the freezer for ice cream. There’s a tub of berry potter and some frozen meat as well as frozen tater tots, but Octavian ignores everything except the ice cream in order to make some comfort food. He makes two huge bowls and sprinkles coffee grinds over them both, and spends a few seconds to revel in the fact that he’s both being a courteous host and depriving Percy Jackson of (what he assumes is) his favorite ice cream. He has barely turned around when Jason hands him a spoon, already reaching around him for a bowl.

“I would text Percy and let him know to buy more while he’s out, but it wouldn’t do him much good. Spill?”

Octavian goes and sits on the arm chair in the sort-of living room, avoiding the close contact of the couch. He doesn’t fail to notice the toga still spread out on the back of the couch or his broach still on the coffee table.

“Pluto rejected me.” He starts.

Jason’s eyebrows furrow and he looks at Octavian weirdly as he sits down on the couch. “Huh?”

“I was waiting to be taken to the judges for months- the lines were so very full- and when I am finally about to step through, I am stopped by a guard and informed that I was not meant to be there. I made it across the river Styx, but apparently I was not dead.”

“But-“ Jason sets his bowl down. “You died. How were you not?”

“I have no clue! My mortal body no longer existed, but I was apparently not meant to be dead.” Octavian buries his spoon in the mounds of ice cream. “So I reappear here, in this idiot’s apartment, and I find him sleeping in bed with my cat curled up at the foot of it.”

“Wait- did you wake him up? Was that the scream I heard?”

Octavian nods. Jason laughed to himself. “Knew he was lying to me. I don’t know what I thought he was doing up here, but he hasn’t talked to me at _all_ man. I live one floor down and I can literally just float up, but he doesn’t ever call or text or drop by. Nothing.”

“Rude.” Octavian shakes his head.

“I know, right?” Jason picks his bowl back up. “And I was thinking like, maybe he just doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, you know? But then you’re here, and he could have talked to me, but he didn’t.” He sighs.

Octavian eats a few spoonfuls of ice cream, taking too long to chew the coffee beans. It’s immediately helpful, making him feel just a little bit better both emotionally and physically. It dawns on him that it’s all he’s eaten since coming back to life, and he lets out a choked-out puff of laughter.

Jason looks up at him in a cross of alarm and confusion, and Octavian gestures at the bowl with his spoon. “This is my first meal as a living man.”

Jason’s eyes widen, and he looks at the bowl. “Berry potter and coffee beans? It’s- gods, Octavian, it’s one o’clock. Are you still sick?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel sick.” He holds out his arm. “I feel the way I did whenever I’d start a new medicine and it’d work so well that it’d convince me that I wasn’t sick at all, and that I could stop taking it, then when I did I’d get so sick that I wouldn’t be able to move.”

“Remember when you thought sick was an offensive word?” Jason asks. “And you insisted we say ‘anemic’ every single time? Even though there was a lot more to it than that?”

“Gods, don’t remind me.” Octavian rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you aware that you’ve known me since I was like twelve?”

“Yeah, I am, and I’ll totally make fun of you for that forever.” Jason gives him a shit-eating grin. “Even in Asphodel.”

Octavian’s eyebrows go way up. “As if you really believe you could land yourself in anything lower than Pluto’s court. You’re too good for Elysium-“

“And if anyone tells me that I’m conceited, I’ll point them to your impression of me.” Jason interrupts. “I’m not perfect.”

“Gods no.” Octavian rolls his eyes. “But you’re good enough to me that sometimes you feel that way.”


End file.
